


you can set yourself on fire / but you're never gonna learn

by charleybradburies



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidents, Angst, Boss/Employee Relationship, Canon Disabled Character, Cheating, Confessions, Conflict, Conflict of Interests, Emotional Infidelity, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, Everything Hurts, F/M, Fantasy, First Kiss, Hate to Love, Heavy Angst, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Infidelity, Internal Conflict, Love, Love Triangles, Mistakes, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not Canon Compliant, POV Male Character, Season/Series 02, Sexual Fantasy, So Wrong It's Right, Surprise Kissing, Surprises, Unrequited Love, Unresolved, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 08:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5861368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kiss happened without much thought beforehand. During the aftermath, though, Daniel can't stop thinking about it...and everything it just might mean.</p><p>title from the Panic! at the Disco song "Crazy=Genius."</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can set yourself on fire / but you're never gonna learn

**Author's Note:**

> Comments appreciated! Will continue if wanted, too...idk I'm an angst person oops.

In hindsight Daniel realizes that part of why it had been so unexpected was that he’d thought everything would come crashing down in a fight. He wasn’t a particularly angry man in general, nor was Peggy a particularly angry woman, but what with all the tension right in front of his face it was hard to keep from feeling what was there. Even back in New York, it had been very similar to the feeling he’d had before going into battle, something that couldn’t properly be named anxiety, fear, dread, yearning, responsibility, or excitement alone. 

Thinking back on the day that his military career had come crashing down, too, it was far too much the same. He knew all too well that, even knowing what was to come of him, he’d make the same choice that he had the first time round, and so it was with Peggy. She’d ruined him: a thought of her, God forbid more, ruined him for any other woman for the rest of his life, no matter how hard he tried, and yet…he couldn’t keep her out.

His office still smells like her perfume. He should tell Rose to get someone to clean it, to remove every last trace, but it may well be all he has left of Peggy now and he can’t bring himself to make that call.

It’s wrong and sinful and disloyal and so against everything he believed in, everything he was trying to build for himself, but his fingers run along his lips the rest of the evening, every atom of him knowing that the feeling of hers locked with them had been so much better, even, than he’d imagined, so much better that he now ached all over with the pain of a phantom limb for her body against his again. 

_Even once more,_ Daniel tells himself, but he can’t even maintain that lie for a second, not even to himself. 

“I...I shouldn’t have...I wasn’t….I should go,” she’d mumbled, her breath still heavy and tears in her eyes as she’d rushed out without waiting for so much as a nod from him in response, not even straightening her dress as she’d gone. 

He’d missed the phone call that had pulled them apart simply because his body no longer knew how to move, and whether for surprise at the kiss or the indescribable longing and unfamiliarity of the separation that followed, he couldn’t know; it felt so wrong to be aware only of his own body rather than hers with it, but he’d barely touched her at all beforehand. 

He’d held her by the arms and handcuffed her when he and Jack had arrested her at the Griffith, and shaken her hand when she’d arrived in Los Angeles, and a sparse number of other incidents, all singular events; there was no legitimate reason for any part of him to feel foreignness at being without her. 

However, aside the things Daniel didn’t know, there were a couple that he did, like that he’d been planning to propose to a very nice girl about whom he cared a great deal, and stealing away to the men’s room to get himself off to the thought of sharing all of himself with another woman was absolutely not something he should be doing. 

(Besides, if he was getting himself off to the thought of anyone, dammit, it should be Violet, shouldn’t it? She _had_ declared early on after they’d met that she intended to wait until she was married, and Daniel wasn’t the sort to have a problem with that, so he just handled erections the same way he’d been doing since secondary school, and so it wasn’t that they’d ever had issues with keeping their hands to themselves, but he _had_ kissed Violet before today. They weren’t kisses that swelled into jackets pushed off shoulders and arms around each other for dear life, but they weren’t disappointing, or bad, not on their own merits. They just...weren’t _Peggy’s_.

 _She_ wasn’t Peggy, and somehow he couldn’t let himself admit aloud that perhaps that would always be enough to sway him from any other woman. Because if he says it, it’s true, and he can’t shove it down and hide it any more, and he doesn’t know what on earth he’ll do then, after all Hell’s broken loose.)

He also should absolutely not be thinking about what might have happened that evening if his phone hadn’t rung. _Their_ hands had been anywhere _but_ themselves before they’d realized just what they were doing, Daniel’s suit jacket flung away and Peggy’s dress shifting at how and where he’d held her, so tightly and needily and greedily and all too well-received. Had he and Peggy not stopped and recalled that other people were affected by whatever sort of relationship they had...

 _That_ had been one of his deepest, most shameful dreams for so long, and even worse since his promotion, which came with the office, complete with a door with his name on it and a working lock: for he and Peggy to have a great go at it in the office. In New York the places had changed - sometimes the file room, often the locker room, a couple of times in interrogation, and one particularly lascivious daydream had had them in the briefing room, but it was always the same idea, and almost always unbearable. And here? With his very own office and a proper desk and a nice chair, and blinds that closed, and...and then, with Peggy under his command? 

He’d had a dream of it long before it had happened - her, showing up out of the blue, supposedly for work but with a longing in her eyes that told a _very_ different story...he just hadn’t thought it would happen. What reason had he to think it would? That wasn’t the sort of girl she was, to just...

She wasn’t the type of girl who chased a man unless he was a threat she was about to neutralize.

Was _he_ a threat? 

No, she’d been ordered to come to Los Angeles. Thompson had sent her as some sort of sick joke.

_“Sure it wasn’t a broken heart?”_

_The **bastard.**_


End file.
